A YEAR THAT HAS NEVER BEEN

As this year becomes the next, My first feeling is gratitude. 

All 2024 I've stewed over politics and now it's done and will be worse next year.  For two years now we've grieved over the same wars and the misery of hostages, Gazans, Ukrainians, Syrians and more.  For decades we've fought for gun safety and yet our children are calling 911 to report shooters in their schools.  Forever, we face our own or another's chronic or unexpected illnesses. . . .  

but for a time, as this year becomes next, we put these cares aside.  We have to.  We cannot live always on high alert for suffering.  We need times to look for joy.  We need to quietly watch the Cardinal at the feeder, admire the earth and sky, and re-count our blessings.  

So we put on our party clothes and toast the New Year.  The gunshots we hear are celebratory.  The greetings are happy.  late or early, we climb into our beds to embrace each other and bid the old year goodbye.  Or if we'd rather, we ignore it all and have a lovely night off, knowing we wake to a shiny new year.

Maybe that's why at Christmas we sing, "Joy to the world."  Not just to prepare Christians for the birth of a Savior, but to remind us all that we ourselves were born to be joyous.  We have a built-in need for happiness.  Babies know this.  They wiggle and smile and reach for us.  They teach us to love them.  Just days ago Christ came as such a one, tender and mild.

Each year the greatest gifts are life and love.  Never a year goes by that we do not give and receive love.  We keep old photos of those who nurtured our own babyhoods.  We receive phone calls and texts and gifts and visits.  The odds and ends we keep because of love are scattered about. On holidays I get out a three-tiered serving plate made by my daughter.  I wear a circle pin picked out by my son.  I hunt in my closet for something vintage for my granddaughter.  

It could be that some of us lost someone this year, expected and timely or grievously not.  Either way, we mourn.  Yet each of us is here in this irresistible world of beauty and longing to carry on in their memory.  So, yes, as the earth turns, the moon wanes and the sun rises, we can look forward to more good things, more challenges to be sure, but blessings just as surely.  

Have you noticed that whatever our age we feel we've lived long?  Forty-year-olds think they are old, thirty-year-olds the same. Only at the end might we feel that we haven't had time enough to love this earth and all its bounty.  We want another season.  

So here it is for us, 2025, a year that has never been.  We are its first inhabitants.  Welcome, new year.  We are grateful to meet you.  

                Nina Naomi

 

 

 

CHRISTMAS FUTURE, CHRISTMAS PAST

I am writing this the morning before Christmas Eve, 2024. Two mornings from now the Christ child will have been born again and that evening the first candle of Hanukkah will be lit.  The candles on the Advent wreath will have given way to the first candle on the menorah.  Christian homes will have red and gold paper strewn about, children over-sugared and cranky, and everyone needing a day of rest.  In Jewish homes, gift-opening may just be beginning. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, also known as the Feast of Dedication.  Thus the beliefs of many flourish in their winter celebrations.  

When we were children, our birthdays and Christmases were magical.  Especially when we believed in Santa Clause, but even later as we were off school and there was snow, enough for snowforts and sledding and snowball fights.  We didn't have to shop or plan or cook until later in our lives.  As children, Christmas didn't put us in debt.  At our house, Grandma Giesler brought the ham, or some years hosted a turkey dinner in her dining room.  We cousins were spoiled. 

Years later my mother, by then a grandmother, made Christmas stockings for all of us--red quilted fabric with green rick-rack, trimmed with appliqués, beads and jingle bells.  We draw names, like a secret Santa gift exchange. In this way, she is still part of our celebration.  My Grandma Giesler's lace tablecloth has been our tree skirt for years. 

One year I made Christmas dinner in borrowed electric skillets and served it from the Clubhouse of the apartment complex where we lived.

Now I am third from the oldest in my immediate family.  More Christmases behind than ahead. They are still magical.  Everything about the preparation is magical.  I get to cut the greens from our forest, the berried branches from the holly and fill the vases with fragrant pine. I tell Alexa to "play classical Christmas music."  I wait for gifts to arrive on our stoop.  I go to cheerful, busy grocery stores to shop.  We keep the Advent candles company each Sunday and still send and receive a few Christmas cards in the mail.  Our Jewish friends are almost ready for their holy days to begin.  

And the celebrations will continue.  The shortest week of the year, between Christmas and New Year's, most of us see more family and friends.  Even those who work those days, get an extra day at New Year's.  The nights are still long and dark and give us breathing room.  Don't we always look forward to a new year?  

I hope to someday be remembered as my own grandmothers are, as someone who gave love and special attention, who imparted faith and joy and whom they might wish, in some way, to emulate.  

Merry Christmas to all.          Nina Naomi

CHRISTMAS IS ALMOST HERE

A quick thought standing at the kitchen sink:  I've almost got a handle on Christmas. A moment of pride. The menu in my head, the gifts mostly under the tree.  I'm not adrift and I'm the one who has to make it happen:  plan the meals, buy the gifts, cook the meals, decorate the house, wrap the presents, stack the log rack and light the fire. 

Then minutes later, looking out the window at the red sun behind the trees, I catch myself:  I don't make Christmas happen at all.  Whether I'm stressed or harried, the house a mess, the tree lights tangled, the cookies store-bought, the late arrival of a gift or two, nothing is about me.

Whatever made me think I needed a "handle" on Christmas?  When has that ever mattered? Why all the self-centeredness?

We will go to one of the many Christmas Eve services and sing Silent Night, Holy Night by candlelight. The family members who spend Christmas Eve at our house will arrive somewhere near the allotted time.  We will, in fact, have too much food for our small group.

The next day we will unwind, my husband and I and the day after more grandchildren will come.  No one cares if wrapping paper is strewn and the ham or turkey is left-over. Hopefully we, with the rest of Christendom, will count our many blessings, our OK-to-good health, the warmth of our friendships, the love of friends and family.    

Hopefully we will remember that Christmas is not about Santa or jingle bells or how many gifts we give or receive. Or even our everyday worries. We will remember that Christmas is about our faith in the Christ child who was born in a manger to die and be resurrected on Easter Sunday and give us eternal life.  

And you and I will say, "In this we believe."   

  
 

THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN'T LOVE

The deer come by tonight at dusk

While I am standing still.

Night falls so early as it must.

I wait for dark until

It catches me by quick surprise,

The sun to sudden drop.

How cold and bright our winter eyes.

I wish that time would stop.

The day, bare trees, December stars, 

The white tail boundless free.

its home is one without false wars.

where I would rather be.

 

On cue I see the geese in flight.

They loudly cross the sky

To give the rising moon a fright.

Whole towns hear them squawk by.

It's darker now and all I feel

Is breath of faun and doe

Beneath the cedars settling in.

The geese are quiet too.

A Silent Night is such release,

To huddle close like deer.

Or wait for morning like the geese,

With nothing frightening near.

It's true there's nothing we can't love

If greed we keep at bay.

If our heart's focus is above

Where saints and angels play.

It helps to see the doe and stag,

The goose and gosling too.

The waxing and the waning moon,

The people called the poor.

 

It helps to know we're not alone, 

That we are creatures sure.   

That what's at stake is life on earth.